The deployment and adoption of cloud, virtualization, mobile, and social media applications in recent years have increased demand for SSL certificates. As SSL certificates are deployed to secure transactions through these different trends, the management of SSL certificates becomes more challenging. With network infrastructures that spans multiple groups of servers, organization units, and locations, managing SSL certificates can be a complex, time-consuming process that burdens information technology (IT) teams and puts a drain on resources.
Currently a network administrator configures and provisions SSL certificates manually or through simple scripts. Network administrators generally need to login to each server (which could number in the thousands) to obtain and install new or renewed SSL certificates. Installing a new or renewed SSL certificate can be a tedious and time consuming task that is prone to mistakes.
The consequences of mismanagement of certificates can be dire. Any uncertainty surrounding SSL certificates status poses a risk that can have serious consequences. For example, the expiration of an unknown certificate, a missed renewal, or update—or keeping an expired certificates on an asset—can create security vulnerabilities, leaving enterprise networks exposed and potentially resulting in critical system downtime. If a data security breach occurs, the costs of mitigating the damage can be expensive: enterprises can face higher support costs, lower productivity and revenue, and even cause damage to their hard-earned reputations.